Archive for March, 2010

Intel’s New i7 Processor for Business

Wednesday, March 31st, 2010

I just purchased a new laptop for my son who is graduating this spring. The laptop uses the new Intel i5 chip, the i7 chip version was nearly $500 more. He absolutely loves the laptop and has commented several times on how fast it runs, especially compared with the old Centrino laptop he has used up to now.

This got me thinking about possibly purchasing one of the new i7 desktops for development. Wondering what the difference is between the i5 and i7, I went straight to the Intel website to find out.

According to Intel the new features that set the i7 apart from the i5 (and other processors) include faster clock speeds, 4 cores capable of running 8 threads simultaneously (6 and 12 respectively on the i7 Extreme), and intelligent Intel Turbo Boost technology. All of this combines to make the i7 a premier candidate for 3D gamers and multimedia applications. That’s great for the gamers, who tend to tax processors more than most businesses by the way. But, how do these features translate to our world of business and development work?

Four cores double the processing capabilities and provide extra speed for multi-threaded applications. If you use a computer with the i7 for virtualization, it means you can run more virtual machines before the system becomes noticeably taxed. In my case, it is typical to have several virtual machines running to simulate a network environment for development. Added to this are the additional resources required to run Microsoft Word, Microsoft PowerPoint, and/or Camtasia. I have frequently struggled to eke out that last little bit of performance with all of these running.

This brings me to the Intel Turbo Boost Technology. The i5 and i7 processors include this intelligent speed boosting technology. These processors constantly monitor resource usage and dynamically increase the processor speed when needed. The converse is also true. The processor decreases speed when the demands on it are light. When the speed decreases, power consumption also decreases. So, when we are running multiple virtual machines or several instances of SQL Server 2008, the processor can boost itself to a higher speed if all of the applications require processing time, and conserve energy when only one or two of them are running.

Hyper-Threading enables each processor core to act like two cores by running up to two threads when necessary. The technology ensures that at each thread runs during the pause, or down times for the other thread to maximize each clock cycle.

One last feature that impresses me is Application Targeted Accelerators. Application Targeted Accelerators are special fixed-function additions to the processor that handle specific duties outside of the mainstream core processing. The applications that will benefit the most include graphics, video encoding and processing, 3-D imaging, gaming (really?), string and text processing, CRC checking, lexing, regular expression evaluation, virus scanning and intrusion detection.

Another significant feature is the enhanced vPro technologies. I think I will save that for a future blog.

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Oracle to SQL: Part 2

Wednesday, March 31st, 2010

In my previous post, we looked at the first steps to accessing Oracle data in SQL Server: creating a Replication Administrative Schema User, and then granting the Replication Administrative Schema user SELECT permissions on the tables you want to migrate to SQL Server.

Next, you need to install the Oracle client networking software and the Oracle OLE DB provider on the SQL Server Distributor, so that the Distributor can make connections to the Oracle Publisher. You should install the most recent version of the Oracle client software. You may choose to install different options depending on your needs, but these are the steps that I followed when I installed the software.

I chose the Administrator option to ensure all the components I needed were installed. The Oracle Universal Installer will guide you through the rest of the steps to install the client software. I also installed the networking software which didn’t start automatically after I installed the client software. You can start this wizard by navigating to Start | All Programs | Oracle – OraClient11g_home1 | Configuration and Migration Tools | Net Configuration Assistant.

When I opened the Oracle Net Configuration Assistant, I chose the Local Net Service Name configuration option.

To access an Oracle database across the network you use a net service name. The net service name is usually the global database name. On the Net Service Name Configuration, Service Name page, you need to enter this name. I selected the option to use TCP to communicate with the database over the network. On the Net Service Configuration, TCP/IP Protocol page, you need to enter the name of your Oracle server, and you can change the port number if you want, but I kept the default.

On the Net Service Name Configuration, Test page, you should perform a test. When I performed this test, I got an error. To get around the error, I had to change the login to the Replication Administrative Schema user I created. Then, the test succeeded.

For the rest of the wizard, I accepted the defaults, and then restarted the computer.

After completing the wizard, there are a few more steps to migrate Oracle data to the SQL Server, which I will talk about in my next post.

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Oracle to SQL: Part 1

Wednesday, March 31st, 2010

I started working on a simple migration of Oracle data to SQL Server and had a hard time finding a single document explaining the entire process. Having almost no experience with Oracle, any steps that involved Oracle took me a long time to complete. So here are the steps that I followed.

First, you need to run a script to create a Replication Administrative Schema User. There is a script that is provided when you install SQL Server 2008. It is located at <drive>:\\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\<InstanceName>\MSSQL\Install\oracleadmin.sql. You need to copy this script to the Oracle server. In this example, I copied the script to the root of the C drive. Then you need to run the script using sqlplus. Here are the steps to run it using sqlplus on a Windows Server 2008 R2 server with Oracle installed.

  1. Open a Command Prompt.
  2. Type sqlplus.
  3. Logon with an account with DBA privileges on the Oracle server.
  4. Run the script by typing @ and then the path to the script in quotes. For my example this would be @”c:\oracleadmin.sql”.
  5. You will be prompted for a name and password for the new user. Also, you will be prompted for the default tablespace.

Next, you need to give the Replication Administrative Schema User you just created SELECT permissions on the tables you want to access in SQL Server.

You can grant the SELECT permissions in the Database Control console.

  1. On the Oracle server, you need to login to the Database Control with a user that has DBA permissions.
  2. Click on the Server tab. Under Security, click Users.
  3. Select the user you created, and then click Edit.
  4. Click on the Object Privileges tab. In the Select Object Type list, select Table, and then click Add.
  5. Under Select Table Objects, click the flashlight icon.
  6. In the Schema list, select a schema.
  7. Click Go.
  8. Select the tables you want to be able to access in SQL Server.
  9. Under Available Privileges, click SELECT, and then click Move.
  10. Click OK, and then click Apply.

The next steps are performed on the SQL Server machine. I will discuss these steps in my next post.

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Exchange 2010: OWA

Wednesday, March 31st, 2010

Outlook Web Access has gone through many improvements over the years, starting as a very basic web interface and has been building up to a thin client replica of the Microsoft Outlook client. With Exchange Server 2010, OWA appears to be a fully mature edition.

OWA now lets you group messages by conversation, grouping all messages that originated from a single message and all the resulting replies. This is not a big deal if you are just going back and forth between one other person in the organization, but if you are receiving feedback from 10 or 100 people in your organization, you’ll can easily keep those messages together.

To help protect people from sending damaging or embarrassing messages, Exchange Administrators can configure Mail Tips. This feature is implemented similar to how Outlook Rules work and can provide users with a warning when an email is being sent to an external recipient, to a large distribution group, or to someone who is currently Out of Office.

User can now perform more powerful searches from Outlook Web Access, similar to what is available in the full Outlook client. You can search by recipient, whether attachments were included, and many other common search criteria. You can also set your favorite searches so that you can reuse them with a single click of the mouse.

Presence information is now integrated into Outlook Web Access allowing you to immediately know whether a person is available, busy, or not available using a green, yellow, red color coding. Depending on how important your message is and the recipient’s status, you can decide to Instant Message the person, another feature that is integrated directly into OWA when the Microsoft Office Communications Server is also implemented.

Finally, one of my favorite features now is the SMS Sync feature. By using Exchange ActiveSync, you can configure the server to automatically send out SMS text messages to your cell phone. This feature is also configured using rules, so whenever you get an email from a particular client, you can have a notification sent directly to your phone.

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Using Windows PowerShell as an IT Pro – Part 14

Wednesday, March 31st, 2010

In my last post I reviewed arrays. Now I will explore Operators.

An operator is a language element that can be used in a command or expression to perform an operation. Windows PowerShell supports several types of operators to help you manipulate values. First, let’s look at Arithmetic operators.

Arithmetic operators calculate numeric values. Arithmetic operators are used to add, subtract, multiply, and divide values, and to calculate the remainder (modulus) of a division operation.

In addition, the addition operator (+) and multiplication operator (*) also operate on strings, arrays, and hash tables. The addition operator concatenates the input. The multiplication operator returns multiple copies of the input. You can even mix object types in an arithmetic statement. The method used to evaluate the statement is determined by the type of the leftmost object in the expression.

Windows PowerShell supports the following arithmetic operators:

Operator Description Example
+ Adds integers; concatenates strings, arrays, and hash tables. 6+2
“file” + “name”
- Subtracts one value from another value. 6-2
(get-date).date – 1
- Makes a number a negative number. -6+2
-4
* Multiplies integers; copies strings and arrays the specified number of times. 6*2
“w” * 3
/ Divides two values. 6/2
% Returns the remainder of a division operation. 7%2

 

Windows PowerShell processes arithmetic operators in the following order:

· Parentheses ()

· – (for a negative number)

· *, /, %

· +, – (for subtraction)

Windows PowerShell processes the expressions from left to right according to the precedence rules. The following examples show the effect of the precedence rules:

3+6/3*4

Operator01

10+4/2

Operator02

(10+4)/2

Operator03

(3+3)/(1+1)

Operator04

You can also do this with non-numeric types. Numbers, strings, arrays, and hash tables can be added; numbers, strings, and arrays can be multiplied. However, you cannot multiply hash tables.
When adding strings, arrays, or hash tables, the elements are concatenated. When you concatenate collections, such as arrays or hash tables, a new object is created that contains the objects from both collections. If you try to concatenate hash tables that have the same key, the operation fails.
For example, the following commands creates two strings and then adds them:
$a = "1"
$b = "A"
$a + $b

In my next post we will examine assignment operators.

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More Windows 7 Tips and Tricks

Monday, March 29th, 2010

Windows 7 builds and improves upon the advances made in Windows Vista.  A lot has been written about how to take advantage of the new features, but a lot of this information is scattered all over the place.  Here are some of the new features that I personally use.

Sizing and moving windows

If you want to have two windows up side-by-side, it’s easy have Windows automatically size them for you with the snap feature.  Simply drag a window to the left side of the screen, and it will automatically dock to the left.  Then do the same with your second window on the right side of the screen and you’ve got both windows running side-by-side.  This is great for widescreen monitors, and if you were paying attention to my previous blog, you know that you can do this with Windows key shortcuts (Win+Left/Right Arrow).

Let’s say you want to minimize all windows but the one in which you are currently working.  You can quickly do this by clicking and holding onto the windows bar of your current window and then shaking the mouse back and forth a few times.  Bring the minimized windows back by doing it again.

The improved calculator

In Windows 7, the built-in calculator has been redesigned to allow you to go beyond basic math with unit conversion, such as Fahrenheit to Celsius and ounces to grams. Calculation templates make it easier to figure out things like fuel economy and lease payments. Additionally, new features such as Programmer, Scientific, and Statistics modes and tracking calculation history make it a very powerful tool.

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The Problem Steps Recorder

 

If you’re having a problem with an application and need an easy way to illustrate the problem to tech support or your friend the computer expert, you can use Problem Steps Recorder to automatically capture the steps you take, including a text description of where you clicked and screen shot. Once you have recreated the problem and captured these steps, you can save them to a file and send it to your support person, who can then open it up and view the steps you recorded.

To launch Problem Steps Recorder, simply click Start, type PSR and then hit Enter. Or, you can do it using the Win+R shortcut key.

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Open multiple instances of the same program

Here’s another helpful tip that can make it easier to get things done in Windows. If you’ve already got an application running, like Microsoft Word, or a Command Prompt, and you want to open another instance of the program, rather than clicking through the Start menu, you can simply Shift+Click on the taskbar icon to quickly launch another instance.

The taskbar and Start menu

In Windows 7 you can pin favorite programs anywhere on the taskbar or Start menu for consistent and easy access. And once you’ve pinned some items to the taskbar, you can easily rearrange them any way you like by clicking and dragging. You can also use the taskbar to preview windows by moving the mouse over a taskbar icon to see a thumbnail preview of open files or programs. Then, move your mouse over a thumbnail to preview the window full-screen. You can even close a window from the thumbnail preview – a big time saver.

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Windows 7 Windows Key Shortcuts

Monday, March 29th, 2010

Windows 7 comes with many new tools and features designed to make it the most robust and powerful operating system ever.  The intuitive design means that many people know how to use Windows, but there are numerous tips and tricks that you can master to make yourself a more efficient user, and in the next two updates, I’m going to talk about some of these.

Most people know how to use CTRL+C and CTRL+V to  copy and paste, but did you know that in addition to these and other commonly-known shortcut keys, there are numerous others that involve the Windows key? Take a look at this table and familiarize yourself with a few of these shortcuts and you’ll find yourself navigating Windows like an expert:

Key Combination

Result

Win+Up Arrow

Maximize window

Win+Down Arrow

Minimize / restore window

Win+Left Arrow

Snap window to left side

Win+Right Arrow

Snap window to right side

Win+Home

Minimize / restore all other windows

Win+Space

View desktop without minimizing any windows

Win+Tab  Win+Shift+Tab

Cycle through windows in 3D

Win+D

Minimize / restore all windows

Win+E

Open Windows Explorer at Computer node

Win+F

Open Windows Search

Win+L

Lock desktop

Win+R

Open Run window

Win+U

Open Ease of Access Center

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How to Create Custom Ringtones for your iPhone from Music Files in iTunes

Monday, March 29th, 2010

In iTunes, by default, you can only create ringtones from music you purchased from the iTunes Store. I personally have never bought any music from the iTunes store – I have a lot of music on CD that I legally own and have ripped to my computer in the form of MP3 files. It’s easy enough to add such files to your iTunes library and subsequently your iPhone (use the File -> Add File/Folder to Library option in iTunes).

So let’s say you’ve got a song you like and you want to create a ringtone out of it. Since you can’t make a ringtone out of an entire song, you need to identify which portion of the song you want to use as the ringtone. I try to find a catchy riff that’s easy to loop and is going to be loud enough to hear like you’d expect from a normal ringtone.

So for example, I have a song here that I want to make a ringtone out of. I’ve identified that if I just use the first two bars, or roughly the first eight seconds of the song, it should be about right.

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So right-click on the song and then click Get Info. Then click the Options tab. Set the Start Time and End Time values using the x:xx.xxx format and then click OK. At this point you’re just giving it your best guess.

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Now back in the music library screen in iTunes, I like to select the checkbox for ONLY the song I’m creating the ringtone from, like so:

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Then, at the bottom of the screen, select the repeat button – the third one from the left:

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This allows you to play and loop the snippet so that you can hear it just as you would if it were playing as a ringtone from your phone.

Most likely you’re going to find that your timing is a little off and you’ll need to go back into the song properties and adjust the start and stop times. Ideally you want it to play so that when it loops back to the beginning, it maintains the beat and blends seamlessly from end to start. Here’s what I came up with for this song after I was satisfied with the timing:

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Once you’ve done that, the next step is to right-click the song and then click Create AAC Version. This creates a compact audio file that captures only the portion of the song that you specified based on the start and stop time values.

Next, right-click the AAC version and then click Copy.

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Now on your computer, create a folder where you will store ringtone files. Right-click in this folder and then click Paste. You should see your file name with a .m4a extension. Rename this, changing the extension to .m4r.

Now, back in iTunes you can delete the AAC version of the song you created. Right-click it and then click Delete. Click Remove and then click Keep File. This removes it from your iTunes library without deleting the file itself from your computer.

Also, don’t forget to go back into the options for the original song and uncheck the start and stop times. If you don’t do this, then any time you try to play this song in iTunes, or on your iPhone or iPod once you’ve synced with iTunes, then it will play only the portion of the song between the start and stop times.

Now, in iTunes, click the Ringtones library. Then on the File menu, click Add File to Library. Browse to the folder where you copied the ringtone file to and then click Open.

Clearly, you can see that I think KMFDM songs make great ringtones.

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Finally, click your iPhone device, and then on the Ringtones tab, select Sync ringtones and then click Apply.

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Having done this, you can now go into your contacts on your phone and assign a custom ringtone that you’ve created as the default ringtone, or even to individual contacts.

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Sounding Off Part Three

Monday, March 29th, 2010

An internal paint job to avoid monotony and quality equipment completes the package.

With the anticipation of spending many hours in the studio, I took a creative approach to painting the walls. A darker base color with splashes of bright colors helped lighten the small space.

The Electro-Voice Cardinal microphone is the key to quality in the recordings. I started out with a USB headset microphone and found that it created a thin and often echoing sound quality. Changing to a cardioid condenser microphone eliminated many of the audio artifacts that I was struggling to process out of previous recordings.

A tube pre-amp from Behringer provides a warm, smooth sound that rounds out the dull sound of purely digital recordings. The amp also provides the phantom power required by the Cardinal microphone.

The Behringer MX602A low-noise mixer provides live control over basic EQ and gain settings. It also provides a headphone jack. Using the mixer’s headphone jack instead of the computer’s jack eliminated the distracting delay that sound cards are notorious for.

I also added a Vistablet digitizing tablet for more precise control over mouse and cursor movement while recording the video portion of projects. Using a mouse works fine. However, the mouse would not always register when I moved it. Not to mention that the mouse pad is rarely able to cover the entire space on the monitor resulting in a jerky recording from picking the mouse up and moving back to the other side of the pad so it would roll clear across the screen. The digitizing tablet represents the entire area of the monitor providing instant movement of the cursor without the typical trials of a mouse.

All of this is used with the new Camtasia version 7 for both audio and video recording. If any additional processing of audio is required, I can easily do that with Audacity 3.0.

The final touch was the strategic placement of baffling materials on the walls and ceiling. My first recordings were much too “live” with reverberation, even in this small space. Baffling hung from the ceiling and on the walls dampened that to a reasonable bright sound. Some additional wall hangings also cancelled out an annoying high frequency ring. I had no idea when I started that it would get that detailed and nitpicky to make everything work smoothly.

I have now spent nearly a week and a half recording both video and audio in the new studio. The difference it has made is indescribable in both the quality of the recordings and my ability to block out the daily distractions.

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Sounding Off Part Two

Sunday, March 28th, 2010

The greatest challenge to building a room, or booth, suitable for recording quality audio is ambient noise. Simple walls and basic building materials are definitely not suitable for dampening the various sounds and frequencies that surround us. To solve this issue, walls were built with two by four construction overlayed with dense compressed wood. Inside the walls is standard insulation along with a specialized sound dampening board that looks like compressed dead grass and dirt.

Most of the wall studs and floor joists are offset instead of straight across to help capture various sound frequencies. My research indicated that the more consistently shaped the air spaces in the wall and floor, the easier it is for various frequencies to penetrate into the sound room.

The floor is elevated two inches off the office floor by commercial casters. This helps isolate the floor of the “studio” from the low end frequencies and vibrations that easily move through solids. Flooring is completely enclosed with the spaces filled with the same as the walls. A dense foam rubber gasket to further isolate the interior of the room from the exterior also isolates the top floor.

All cabling and wiring is also run with an offset. By this I mean that the entry location of any cabling or wiring is approximately 30 inches to the side, or below the location of the other end on the inside of the room. Any straight through access from the outside to the inside would allow sound to travel through the walls with very little if any dampening.

Ventilation is provided by an ultra-quiet bank of 12v fans. The fans are placed within a ventilation box that is composed of two sides. One side provides incoming air and the other provides a return. Within the box are randomly placed caches of baffling to quiet the sound of air movement within the ventilation box.

Lighting comes from a special fluorescent lighting fixture rated for extremely quiet operation. There is none of the typical buzz heard from standard fluorescent lights.

Flooring is simply low pile commercial carpeting over a six pound pad and stretched to keep it from bunching up.

Finally, the door is built with an outside layer that is about three quarters of an inch overlap similar to the way the walls are built. This helps eliminate sound penetration through any gaps along the sides of the door.

In the next blog, I will discuss the equipment used to create the audio recordings.

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